Month: March 2024

Today, one of the largest Bitcoin mining rig manufacturers, Bitmain, announced the launch of the Antminer S21 Pro at the Global Digital Mining Summit (WDMS) 2024, an event the company hosts.

💥ANTMINER S21 Pro Newly Launched
❗️234T ❗️15.0J/T
📈Create a New Level of Hashrate pic.twitter.com/wZyUv7pbOQ

— BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) March 29, 2024

The new device, an improvement upon its most efficient mining rig, the S21, is notably more efficient—and powerful—than the previous iteration of the device.

Irene Gao, VP of Mining at Bitmain, highlighted in her announcement how the Antminer S21 Pro has a hash rate of 234 TH/s and an energy efficiency ratio of 15.0 J/TH. In contrast, the Antminer S21 has a hash rate of 200 TH/s and a power consumption efficiency ratio of 17.5 J/TH.

Gao also highlighted how durable the S21 Pro is.

“It has the ability to deal with more challenging environments,” she said, before sharing that the device can withstand temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

The after coupon U.S. dollar to terahash rate for the device is $18.9/TH and Bitmain will begin shipping the device in Q3 2024.

This announcement comes just seven months after Bitmain launched the S21.

The S21 was quickly adopted by Bitcoin miners, as it has already sold out via the company’s website.

Bitmain no longer has Antminer S21 mining devices in stock.

“We truly believe this new product will be helpful for you to make your long-term plans for your mining expansion, especially before the new cycle,” added Gao.

For more information on the Antminer S21 Pro, keep an eye out for updates on Bitmain’s website.

Some Nigerians were shocked when crypto exchange Binance announced they would discontinue all services in Nigeria by March 8. Despite facing scrutiny from regulators before the announcement, many people still asked how the biggest exchange in crypto could just disappear from the world’s fastest growing market for Bitcoin adoption. I wasn’t shocked because I’ve been predicting this for years. Entrepreneurs in the Global South are under attack and the frontline is a currency war being played out right before our eyes.

I founded NoOnes, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading platform based in the Global South, because I foresaw the problems facing the crypto industry. Three years ago, I saw this day coming. I knew it was coming because I was the CEO of a Bitcoin company based in the United States, and I saw the financial apartheid and all the regulatory problems up close. American regulators hold Africans in such low regard they make rules to suit Westerners and don’t care too much about anyone else. I knew it would be more and more difficult to serve Africans and the rest of the Global South if my company was based in the US. That’s why I created NoOnes.

My only option was to turn my back on a business I had built into a Bitcoin P2P platform with over 10 million users. The problems I saw back then are exploding right now, but blaming governments alone is not the path forward. We must understand the pressures our leaders are under because only when we do that can we come to the table with them to forge a new path ahead. Right now, all we have is a bunch of people cursing each other and that is not the way forward.

This war is about the financial system and the power to control the levers that decide whose money is good and whose money is bad. Entrepreneurs in the Global South are trapped in their own markets, so that even making payments or doing business with countries next door is difficult. For the average African entrepreneur to scale any business by expanding outside the African continent, it is basically impossible. And now that Binance has left Nigeria, some businesses based here are wondering what’s next.

To be able to truly unlock the potential for Global South entrepreneurs to create value, we have to nurture them and create an environment that allows them to flourish. That’s only possible if we do what I’ve been advocating for years: ensure there is free trade by having a free-flowing money system. Making it happen is not going to be easy, and that’s why I had to make some tough decisions. I had to leave the US, I had to give up a successful company I founded, and I had to start all over again in the Global South.

I know why Binance was forced to leave Nigeria, and I’m sure it will happen to other crypto companies and in other countries. It’s almost impossible to run a crypto business or a bitcoin marketplace serving Africa from another continent because you have to be on the ground to see the problems and find the solutions. I knew we couldn’t achieve our mission to help the unbanked if we didn’t have boots on the ground in the Global South, and that’s why we based NoOnes here right from the start. I’m not some mad guy who gave eight years of my life to a company and then left on a whim. I set-up NoOnes so I could be here for this

moment. Binance might have pulled-up stakes and gone home, but NoOnes won’t do that – we are already home.

I know Nigeria and I know the Global South because my businesses have been active here for years. We live and work here now, and we listen to what people on the ground tell us. We hired local Africans to handle moderation for Africans, for example, and that’s partly what “boots on the ground” means – instead of a bunch of Americans passing judgment, we use local Africans to make moderation safer and fairer. We are not looking at Africa – or any of the Global South where we operate – as places to plunder. We see Africans as partners and fellow humans. That’s why we created our partner program to share our profits with the people who are part of our business.

I’ve met thousands of tech-savvy Nigerian entrepreneurs and I know there is a reason for the high-level of Bitcoin adoption here. For too long they have been shackled by an unfair global financial system, by financial apartheid that creates money prisons and stifles economic growth. Bitcoin and NoOnes give those entrepreneurs the opportunity to show what they can do when markets are free and money is allowed to flow. All they need to grow is a level playing field. They just need a shot, a path towards success, and when we open up any window of opportunity they bust right through it. That’s why NoOnes is not simply creating the best site to buy Bitcoin. We are going all out to give them life-changing opportunities.

When I speak in auditoriums around Africa and explain what is possible with Bitcoin and our peer-to-peer platform, I see people’s eyes light up. When I talk to them one-on-one, I am astonished at the amount of hustle and business acumen they have. Our next step is to make it easier for these entrepreneurs to take their business to the next level. We are building a product that will give local entrepreneurs a massive opportunity to build businesses in their own country for their own citizens, and, ultimately, to keep the profits inside their country.

Despite the withdrawal of Binance Nigeria, tons of opportunities remain. NoOnes was built for these times and we are ready to pick-up the slack to help dynamic, savvy Nigerians who see the value of Bitcoin and want to be a part of this new era of prosperity in the Global South. The battles we have to fight might be tough, but the opportunities on the fastest growing continent on the planet are worth it.

This is a guest post by Ray Youssef. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine. 

A U.K. judge ordered to freeze $7.6 million (£6 million ) worth of Craig Wright’s assets worldwide after finding that he falsely claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin.

The order comes after Wright’s decisive loss in a landmark lawsuit against the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA). Earlier in March, Judge James Mellor ruled that Wright did not author the Bitcoin whitepaper, create Bitcoin, or develop its early software, debunking his longstanding claims to the contrary.

Now, Mellor has granted COPA’s application for a worldwide freezing injunction to prevent Wright from dissipating assets and evading costs related to the case. The British judge found Wright’s recent transfer of shares to an overseas company “gave rise to serious concerns” about his intentions to avoid the impending costs order.

Judge Mellor quotes from the freezing order judgment:

“that necessarily means (as I shall explain in my Trial judgment) that Dr Wright has forged documents on a grand scale and, during his cross-examination, he lied extensively and repeatedly.”

“Dr Wright has shown himself… pic.twitter.com/BBIlIuZNG6

— hodlonaut 80 IQ 13%er 🌮⚡🔑 🐝 (@hodlonaut) March 28, 2024

Wright must now disclose all assets exceeding $30,000 in value and is prohibited from reducing his holdings below $7.6 million. The freeze reflects ongoing doubts about Wright’s trustworthiness, given his history of defaulting on court judgments and boasts about being “judgment proof.”

The new freezing injunction further hampers Wright’s ability to pursue additional Satoshi Nakamoto-related litigation. It also ensures assets will remain available to cover the multi-million dollar costs bill COPA expects to recover after debunking Wright’s outlandish assertions.

The British judge’s actions to freeze Wright’s assets appear justified in light of his dishonest behaviour. The saga underscores the need for courts to wield tools that prevent litigants like Wright from abusing the legal system and evading accountability.

When it comes to self custodying your bitcoin, there is one inescapable fact: the buck stops with you. You are responsible for your own funds, you are responsible for keeping them safe, you are responsible for everything. This can be a daunting prospect, but there are ways to approach self-custody simply.

Securing your Bitcoin can be thought of similarly to building a house. First, you have to lay a foundation, then you build a frame on top of that, from there you fill in the walls, insulation, utilities, etc. For each piece of the house you want to add, you need to have completed the previous piece properly or the entire house will be unsafe and unstable.

When it comes to Bitcoin security, your seed phrase is the foundation of your security. It is simultaneously the most important yet potentially weakest point in security. Just like the foundation of a house impacts its stability, your seed phrase impacts your wallet’s security.

So how do you store a seed phrase securely? Here are some core considerations to take into account when figuring out how to secure your seed phrase.

Sharing Is Bad

Your seed phrase is your money. Every private key needed to authorize spending, every address and every Bitcoin account in your wallet: all of these pieces are generated from your seed phrase. Anyone who has access to your seed phrase has access to any funds stored in that wallet. Thus, creating and securing a backup of this seed phrase is imperative.

If something happens to your hardware wallet, or the device you installed your software wallet on, your only hope is your seed phrase backup. If you lose that seed phrase backup your money is gone. Your money is accessible in two ways when self custodying your funds, either the wallet you are using, or your seed phrase backup. Your bitcoin wallet protects a copy of your keys on that device, but it can’t help you protect the seed phrase backup.

No one should be given access to your seed phrase; as cold and callous as it sounds, you can’t be sure they will handle it responsibly. They can still misplace a copy of your seed phrase, or leave it lying around unsecured, without any malicious intent on their part.

So, rule one: never share your seed phrase with anyone. Any exception to this rule under any circumstances should be thought through long and hard before breaking it. After all, being too trusting could put your Bitcoin at risk.

Computers Are Not Your Friend

It is critically important to avoid recording your seed phrase in any digital format. Computers are incredibly complicated machines and thus are prone to a litany of security issues. People’s devices are hacked on a regular basis. Copies of your seed phrase can be put at risk when stored digitally. In short, your laptop or smartphone is vulnerable to malware and spyware. If a hacker gains access to your device, they may be able to read your files and extract your seed phrase from any type of digital storage they can access. For this reason, you should avoid storing your seed phrase digitally.

This goes especially for storing anything in a remote digital service, like a cloud storage provider. If your email account was ever compromised, the hacker could use your credentials to log in to any cloud storage service and access your seed phrase.

Under no circumstances should you ever:

Store your seed phrase on a cloud storage site such as iCloud or Google DriveTake pictures of it with your phone or other digital cameraSend it over any digital medium, such as email or text messageEnter it into anything but the bitcoin wallet you are usingHandle it in front of any cameraSay it out loud near a microphone

The only copy of your seed phrase should be physical, and completely isolated from the internet.

This is why keeping sizable amounts of Bitcoin in a software wallet on your computer or mobile phone is not recommended either. To put it simply, your internet connected devices are vulnerable to hackers. Thus, if you want to keep your Bitcoin safe, you should invest in a hardware wallet.

Use Durable Seed Phrase Backups

One important decision should jump out at you when it comes to making a backup of your seed phrase: what do you write it on? This may seem like a silly question if you’re new to this space, but unless you stop using Bitcoin you will need to secure your seed phrase for the rest of your life.

Durability is incredibly important. You could just write your seed phrase on a piece of paper and stuff it in a drawer, but how long will that stay safe? Paper is flammable: it degrades. If you spill water on it the ink could bleed and your backup could become unreadable. Paper is not suitable for longer-term storage.

Metal is a much better option, and numerous products on the market are designed to store your seed phrase on metal.. Some solutions use tiny individual metal tiles with letters on them, so you can slide them into a frame and lock them in place to record your words, such as the BillFodl.

Metal tile backups are reusable, so over time if you generate and move to new wallets the same backup kit can be reused for the new seed phrase. It’s also possible to “destroy” your backup easily if needed by removing the tiles. If you move somewhere you can’t take your backups with you because of the risk of someone else finding them, for example going through an airport, you might not want to leave your backup intact.

Other metal backups use etching tools to scratch or impress the words directly into a flat metal surface, providing even stronger protection against threats like fire. This is extremely secure, but destroying a copy of your seed phrase etched into metal is extremely difficult. To really be certain it is destroyed you have to grind down the entire face of the metal plate until no trace of the words are left.

Lastly, there are capsule based solutions. These use little steel tiles with letters on them, but instead of sliding them into a flat frame, they are loaded into a steel tube around a rod to hold them in place. This can give the benefits of reusability while ensuring that any fire warping does not scatter and dislodge the letter tiles.

When picking between metal tiles or steel plates, weigh the pros and cons of both carefully. But remember: use something metal. Don’t trust your Bitcoin to a flimsy piece of paper.

Physical Safety

Now that we’ve established how to store your seed phrase, where should you store it? Keeping the seed phrase on a robust piece of material is important, but so is keeping it in a place that is difficult to access physically. It should be stored somewhere you can keep locked, such as a safe or a lockbox. A safe is better than a lockbox, as that is bulkier and harder to physically carry. A safe attached to a wall is even better yet, requiring the destruction of a wall to remove the safe.

If you don’t have a safe or a lockbox, keep your seed phrase out of sight. Put it in a filing cabinet or desk drawer in a room not accessible to other people. The important part is making sure that wherever it is, no one else can access it.

Splitting Your Backup

You might not have a single place that can be safely secured to house your backup seed phrase. Two options exist that can allow you to maintain a safe backup without keeping your seed phrase in a single location. If you are considering splitting your seed phrase backup, follow a well known protocol or don’t do it at all.

Splitting your backup yourself

Seed XOR is one mechanism. It is a process that allows you to take a pre-existing seed phrase and split it using a mathematical process into two (or more) new seed phrases. These new seed phrases are fully valid and can later be recombined to regenerate the original seed phrase they were created from. This allows you to divide your seed phrase into pieces and store it in multiple locations. It is very important to keep in mind though, you must have 100% of the split seed phrases, if you lose a single one you cannot regenerate the original seed phrase. A big benefit of XORing is you can do it by hand.

Shamir’s Secret Sharing

The second is Shamir Secret Sharing. Similarly to seed XORing SSS breaks your seed phrase into multiple pieces, but it uses a very different mathematical process to do so. Unlike seed XORing, Shamir shares allow you to recover your original seed phrase with less than 100% of the shares. It can be set up like a multisig, i.e. as long as you have 3-of-5 backup shares you can regenerate your seed phrase. The only downside is that only certain wallets support using Shamir, and it cannot be done by hand.

Under no circumstances should you split up your seed phrase manually. If you are not following a safe and widely scrutinized protocol like Seed XOR or Shamir Secret Sharing, don’t even consider it. Naively splitting your seed phrase into multiple pieces can drastically reduce the security of your bitcoin. Guessing 12 or 24 words randomly and happening to guess someone’s seed phrase is statistically impossible, but if someone has 4 of those words? Or 6 of those words? It starts actually becoming practical to guess the rest of your seed phrase.

Another alternative, if you use a Ledger, is the Ledger Recover service. This paid optional service uses a variant of shamir’s secret sharing called Pedersen Verifiable Secret Sharing (PVSS). This allows you to backup access your wallet without a seed phrase after going through an identity verification process with your government ID.

Social Recovery

If you are in a situation where you do not have a secure place to store your seed phrase backups, alternative solutions exist. Wallets and services such as Unchained, Casa, and Nunchuck Wallet offer multisig solutions where a third party can hold one of your keys for you. For instance if you have a 2-of-3 multisig, they can hold one key. This ensures that as long as you don’t lose both of the keys you keep yourself, they can assist you in moving your funds to a new wallet.

Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe

At the end of the day securing your bitcoin is your responsibility. It is something you need to take seriously and put in the proper effort to maintain, no one is going to come and save you if you don’t take it seriously. As Gandalf warned Bilbo in the Lord of the Rings, “Keep it secret, keep it safe.”

That is your job as a Bitcoiner, to keep your seed phrase hidden from other people and safe from those who would wish to take it from you. The simple advice in this article is the vast majority of what you need to do to accomplish that.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Just record your seed phrase on a durable medium like metal, and keep it physically safe from prying eyes and thieving hands. Keep it locked in your safe or a room other people do not frequently access. Check on it from time to time. That’s all you have to do.

Don’t over complicate things in your head, just keep it simple and your bitcoin will be safe. 

Metalpha Technology Holding Limited (NASDAQ: MATH) provides qualified investors and institutions with boutique crypto wealth management services, as a rising star in Asia akin to MicroStrategy (MSTR). CEO Adrian Wang founded the company on a mission to build a sustainable crypto ecosystem with effective hedging solutions in an industry known for its boom and bust cycles. With the right application of derivative products, investors can ‘earn higher and lose less’ when the market is in turmoil.

“The crypto industry continues to have room for growth, despite its challenges this year. We are looking very closely at how to build a stronger and healthier global market for digital assets, which we are doing together with our partners, such as Antalpha, and many others.” – Adrian Wang, Founder and CEO

The company changed its name from Dragon Victory International Limited (NASDAQ: LYL) and is backed up by Antalpha Technologies Limited, the world’s leading blockchain financial services. In the past year, Metalpha not only built a stronger trading, research, and compliance team in-house but also sealed numerous partnerships such as Litecoin Foundation, NextGen Digital Venture, GRVT, ParaX, and many more. As a Nasdaq-listed company, Metalpha holds Type 4 (advising on securities) and Type 9 (asset management) licenses through its wholly-owned subsidiary, LSQ Capital Limited, by the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC).

The emphasis on compliance paid off when the SFC granted an uplift on the Type 4 license. Metalpha and LSQ Capital have been actively working with the SFC on the Type 4 license uplift. With the uplifted Type 4 license, in addition to offering securities advising services, LSQ Capital is now able to issue analyses and reports on virtual assets to qualified investors.

Advantages in Trading

As a leader in crypto derivatives, Metalpha offers clients customized products, such as Accumulator and Snowball, that are based on mathematical models with careful financial engineering. The trading team comes with rich experience with Wall Street banks. The company reported the notional amount of derivative products issued of $382 million under its wealth management business arm, which generated a fiscal-year income of $5.7 million jumped from $0.1 million in the fiscal year 2022, a 5,600% increase.

The company’s trading positions have always been targeted to be market-neutral. The company has set out strict risk limits on its positions and strictly abides by the regulation requirements in the region it operates.

Bullish on Bitcoin

“The surging of Bitcoin’s price indicates a strong demand from global investors as they are encouraged by the recent performance of Bitcoin ETF inflows. We believe the halving event later this year could further push Bitcoin price to a new height.” – Adrian Wang, Founder and CEO

Metalpha prides itself on being the long-term advocate of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. The company has been vocal about its belief in the future mass adoption of Bitcoin since the approval of the Bitcoin ETFs. The company considers itself to be a growth-driven crypto stock and is comparable to MicroStrategy in many ways. Both Metalpha and MicroStrategy focus on Bitcoin investing, whereas Metalpha focuses particularly on the wealth management sector. Since the successful restructuring, Metalpha’s stock has led a strong performance, rising more than 86% year on year as of March 3, 2024, according to Yahoo Finance.

Metalpha vs. MicroStrategy

“Working with the brilliant team at NextGen has been delightful. The launch of the NextGen Fund marked the first step by both sides to roll out compliant yet rewarding products together. We look forward to building a more robust partnership going forward.”Adrian Wang, Founder and CEO

While Metalpha shares many similarities with MicroStrategy, key differences remain in the business model, service locations, and products. Metalpha’s revenue is highly growth-focused in a bull market as Bitcoin’s price increases, resulting in balance sheet expansion and trading revenue increases. In a bull market, a more active user base generally results in a higher subscription rate. Therefore the company’s revenue and scale experience high growth in a bull market.

While MicroStrategy is headquartered in the U.S., Metalpha is based in Hong Kong. Recent Web3 policies promoted by the Hong Kong regulators have proven effective and forward-looking. It is reasonable to anticipate the digital assets industry will also bloom in 2024 as Hong Kong fully embraces Bitcoin ETFs, STO/RWA, and other milestone innovations.

On the product level, Metalpha offers bespoke hedging solutions and derivative products to qualified investors and institutions. Compared to MicroStrategy, Metalpha’s business model is expansive, covering not only Bitcoin and Ethereum but also other mainstream cryptos upon request. The company offers a fully customized investing and trading experience to its customers.

The company aims to offer a wide range of institutional-focused products as well. Metalpha launched Next Generation Fund I, in partnership with NextGen Digital Venture Limited. According to Bloomberg, The $100 million target fund invests directly in Grayscale’s investment products and indirectly through structured derivatives in respect of Grayscale’s investment products, giving institutions, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals a compliant channel to gain indirect exposure to crypto.

Despite all the differences, Metalpha considers itself Asia’s MicroStrategy in the spirit of the crypto revolution and Bitcoin mass adoption.

This is a guest post by Yiwei Wang. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison by a judge in New York for orchestrating an $8 billion theft from FTX customers.

🚨 BREAKING: JUDGE SENTENCES SAM BANKMAN-FRIED TO 25 YEARS IN PRISON FOR MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR FTX FRAUD pic.twitter.com/M9HotmBma2

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) March 28, 2024

The sentencing, handed down by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, comes after Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven fraud and conspiracy counts related to FTX’s collapse in 2022. Judge Kaplan rejected Bankman-Fried’s claims that customers did not lose money and accused him of lying during the trial.

During the sentencing hearing, Bankman-Fried tried to express regret for the losses suffered by FTX customers, saying he’s “sorry about what happened.” However, Judge Kaplan emphasized the severity of the crime, stating that FTX customers lost $8 billion, equity investors lost $1.7 billion, and lenders to Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund lost $1.3 billion. 

The judge also criticized Bankman-Fried’s dishonesty during the trial, particularly regarding his knowledge of the misappropriation of customer funds. Federal prosecutors had sought a much longer sentence, highlighting the scale and impact of the financial fraud.

Bankman-Fried’s rapid rise in the cryptocurrency industry, came crashing down as the extensive embezzlement scheme of FTX was uncovered, in which his fraudulent actions led to significant losses for investors and customers. Many believe this 25 year sentence is injustice, as Judge Kaplan said today before the official ruling, “I have limited my findings on obstruction to support the finding – there may be more. The total offense level is 60 – once you cross 43, it cannot go higher. The guideline is life in prison. But the maximum is 1320 months in this case.” 

Renowed whistle blower and cybersecurity expert Edward Snowden commented on the news, stating “holy shit he gave him less than Chelsea Manning (35 years) for a waaaaay worse crime.”

The FTX founder was also the Democrat party’s second-biggest individual donor in the 2021/2022 election cycle (donating over $39,800,000).